BALLSTON SPA -- Jurors will continue to deliberate Monday about whether a Ballston Lake man who sent another man to Albany Medical Center after a bar fight in downtown Saratoga Springs was justifiably acting in self defense or viciously assaulted a man who was trying to walk away from the fight last August.

Nicholas McDonald, 32, is charged with second-degree assault, a felony that could carry up to seven years in prison, after he fought with a man on Maple Avenue on a Saturday night last August.

Jurors started deliberations early Friday afternoon and were sent home at 5 p.m.

His 31-year-old victim was either attacking McDonald or backing away with his hands up, depending on whose story jurors believe.

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What is not in dispute is the fact that the fight sent the victim to Albany Medical Center with severe head trauma, including a fractured skull and brain injuries.

The fight took place around 2 a.m. Aug. 21, 2011, outside The Metro bar on Maple Avenue.

McDonald had been drinking with a friend at a Caroline Street bar, Thirteen, earlier that night when surveillance video shows McDonald's friend and another man whom he knew getting into a verbal dispute.

That dispute eventually resulted in McDonald being pushed back by the face and the man who pushed McDonald was thrown out of Thirteen by security guards.

Defense Attorney Terence L. Kindlon said that man -- accompanied by the victim of the later assault -- "stalked" McDonald and his friend to The Metro and sent threatening text messages to McDonald's friend, coaxing him into the street for a fight.

Kindlon said McDonald was unaware of the text messages and, when he and his friend left for the night, they were accosted by three men, including the victim.

McDonald testified during the case that a man rushed toward him and punched him in the face. A picture taken by his mother the next day that was entered into evidence shows a mark under his eye.

Kindlon said McDonald threw a "lucky punch" that connected with his victim's face and caused the man to go down "like a burlap bag full of horseshoes," hit¬ting his head on the pavement.

The defense attorney said McDonald then hit the victim in the face and the torso. "That's all he did, and he was pulled off of him," he said

Kindlon argued that the victim sustained his most serious injuries when he hit his head on the pavement, not at the hands of McDonald.

Assistant District Attorney James Davis, though, called that story "a fantasy."

"No one sees anything remotely resembling that at any point," Davis said. "The defendant is in sales. I submit to you that what he was trying to sell you from the stand was a complete clunker. Don't buy it."

McDonald is the sales manager of an auto dealership.

Davis said six witnesses, including three police officers and the head of security at The Metro, said the victim put his hands in the air and walked backward, saying "I don't want any trouble."

The Metro security guard testified that he broke up an earlier fight between the McDonald and the victim inside the bar and kicked them out.

Davis said McDonald walked toward the victim, eventually "sucker punching" him in the face, making him fall and hit his head on the pavement. Then, Davis said, McDonald "straddled the victim and continuously rained down blows on his head," after he was unconscious.

Kindlon questioned the memory of the witnesses and pointed out contradictions between them including one witness saying the victim walked one way down the street and another who said he was walk¬ing the other way.

"Memory is fragile and malleable," he said.

Kindlon's summation went on for about an hour and a half, during which he discussed the victim's parents, his alleged alcoholism and the victim's friend's previous bar fight in Albany.

"None of that matters," Davis told the jurors. "It's brought up to distract you. It's background noise and you disregard it."

He said the victim suffered "a horrifically savage beating," and "we know who did it."